July 23, 2013 – On Monday night, O’Reilly Factor host Bill O’Reilly delivered a lengthy critique of President Obama’s remarks about the death of Trayvon Martin, accusing the President of ignoring the “real problems” facing black people, including something he called “gangsta culture.” Tuesday night, All In with Chris Hayes host Chris Hayes rebutted what he called O’Reilly’s “super-racist rant,” and said that if O’Reilly is any indication, the national conversation should be about the “problems with white culture.”

Several commentators, and not just on the right, have weighed in with similarly ” realist” assessments of the racial landscape, but O’Reilly is probably the one with the largest audience to do so. Hayes took aim at O’Reilly, telling his viewers “You probably missed Bill O’Reilly’s super racist rant last night, before playing “some choice bits that give you an overall sense of the full thing.”

The clips Hayes played consisted of the sort of statistics that often get thrown around to make the “realist” case that O’Reilly was making, and concluded with O’Reilly’s boast that “You want a conversation? You got it.”

“He, Bill O’Reilly, only wants to create a better situation for blacks,” Hayes interjected. “According to him, it’s liberals, people like you and me, who are ignoring the problems facing African-Americans.”

He then continued with a clip of O’Reilly mocking those who say the criminal justice system is unfair because of the disproportionate incarceration of black men for ” selling drugs.”

Hayes responded with statistics demonstrating the racial disparity that O’Reilly mocked, and promised that “everything he’s saying is easily debunked with about 20 minutes of googling.”

“That’s not really the point,” he continued. “The real reason Bill O’Reilly peddles this stuff is because it gives a cheap cracklike high to the old fearful white audience that watches Bill O’Reilly, and gives Fox News its power, also known as the Republican base. These are the folks Bill O’Reilly is feeding when he laments not being able to criticize black culture.”

“That’s because race hustlers and the grievance industry have intimidated the so-called conversation,,” a clip of O’Reilly played, “turning any valid criticism of African-American culture into charges of racial bias.”

Hayes then accused O’Reilly of having a limited view of black culture, invoking O’Reilly’s 2007 account of a dinner with Al Sharpton at Harlem’s Sylvia’s restaurant. “”There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea,'” O’Reilly said at the time. “You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.”

Hayes concluded that “If Bill O’Reilly is representative of white culture, with his stereotyping and his victim-blaming and domineering tone, then I’m pretty sure we need to start having a national conversation about the problems with white culture.”

There are typos, and then there are typos, and then there’s the gift Mitt Romney just handed his online detractors. Romney’s campaign just launched an app that was supposed to let people show their support by taking pictures, overlaying stirring messages on them, like “American Greatness” or “I’m a Mom for Mitt,” and then sharing them on social media with the message, “I’m With Mitt,” Mashable explains. The problem? One of the banners reads, “A BETTER AMERCIA.”

Yeah, there was no chance this wouldn’t instantly become a meme. People who we suspect are not Romney supporters have been feverishly snapping shots of dictionaries, spelling bee participants, toilets, and more, with the “AMERCIA” banner over them, and a Tumblr has cropped up to show off the best of them. Twitter is abuzz with mockery like, “Will Mitt Romney apologize for Amercia?” and “AMERCIA TEH BUETIFLU.” The campaign tells the Washington Post that it’s submitted a fix for the app to Apple.

This one is downright strange. Seems to me that there is a lot of information on the Internet, including YouTube videos, of what happens when a gun explodes. While there are plastic guns – they are pretty carefully designed not to explode when fired. One has to assume the unsuccessful designs never made it to market – because many of the unsuccessful designers are no longer with us. That self inflicted Darwin – self elimination from the gene pool thing again…

Among the 100 or so guns confiscated in southeast Fresno over the last three months, Sergeant Mark Hudson says one in particular certainly stands out.

“It’s dangerous for those officers being out on the street to see something like this obviously,” Hudson said.

Fresno Police say 54-year-old Randy Smith was walking in the area of Barton and Nevada on Saturday night.

He had a “Super Soaker” water gun hanging around his neck from a sling.

Normally, officers might not think much of it.

But police say they were just briefed about people turning toys into shotguns.

So they stopped Smith, and sure enough, instead of water inside his gun, he had a real shotgun shell.

“He took the Super Soaker apart, was able to fashion a barrel to where he was able to make what’s considered a zip gun, where you can fire one round through it. In this case it was a 20 gauge shotgun shell,” Hudson said.

“The guy that made that gun, he probably got maybe $30 worth of parts,” Bill Mayfield, who works at Gilmay Guns in Fresno, said.

Mayfield says it doesn’t take a gunsmith to make something like this.

But it’s definitely not a smart move.

“The firearms cartridge with the gun powder is an explosive. The device they’re building has to be able to contain the pressure of that explosion,” Mayfield said. “So they’re just relying on, maybe this will hold up. Well, you could be putting a gun next to your head, or you could be putting a hand grenade next to your head.”

Smith faces a laundry list of charges, including being a convicted felon in possession of ammunition, a felon in possession of a firearm, manufacture of an illegal weapon and a misdemeanor warrant.

Rick Santorum continued hisverbal assault on higher education today by accusing California universities of failing to “even teach an American history course.” The GOP candidate slammed UC universities during a speech in Wisconsin, Mediaite reports, saying that “I think it’s seven or eight” schools that neglect US history: “Just to tell you how bad it’s gotten in this country, where we’re trying to disconnect the American people from the roots of who we are, so they have an understanding of what America should be.”